During the production of turbine blades, work is normally carried out with multi-spindle machining. This means that a blank is first of all subjected to rough pre-machining, then the airfoil region is processed in detail, and then the tip and finally the root are produced. Between these individual machining steps, the workpiece must be reset in each case by hand or by a robot; this is because the milling machines are often only able to carry out individual machining steps, and in particular because each mounting of the workpiece always only allows the machining of a certain region. This type of production is normally referred to as “box production”, since in each case one machine is normally responsible for a certain machining step, and because the workpiece can be temporarily stored in a box after each machining step.
A problem with such production is, inter alia, the fact that the speed of such a production line is always determined by the speed of the slowest machining step. In addition, the multiplicity of processes for the transfer of workpieces between the individual units, such as milling machines, measuring station, washing stations, etc., requires complicated devices and leads to considerable time losses in the production process.